HR Tech Euorpe 2011 has a wide range of sessions going on. One of the most interesting (to me anyway) has been the sesion led by the founder of one of the most successful ATS companies, MrTed, Jerome Ternynck. Originally from France, Jerome runs his latest venture, SmartRecruiters in San Francisco, California.

Subtitled Death of Applicant Tracking, Jerome has taken an irreverent look at what we have come to take as the SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) for candidate systems - tracking and managing data, not filling jobs. We only have to look at the evolution of the industry from ATS to Candidate Management System to Talent Management System to....... Yet, as I discussed with someone later in the day, what has really changed in how companies use the technology? Not much - and this really is Jerome's thread.

We all have Mark Zuckerberg to thank for more than FB. According to Jerome, the larger picture of the Social Web is a 'recruiter's dream' on two levels:

1 Easy access to masses of data, quickly and seamlessly.

2 The communications tools to interact with anyone and everyone, anywhere at any time, as we all can have a complete online identiy. Everything we do, act, say (and even think) can be found and filtered through the Social Web.

So, what does this mean for recruitment in 2012. Jerome's 8 stages for you as a Corporate Recruiter:

1 Recruitment is not Tracking, it is Sourcing
Stop the emhasis on only tracking actions and statuses and get back to sourcing and engaging with the candidate.

2 Think MoCal
The New Age Californian in Jerome coming out. Mobile and Local. 95% of candidates live within 25 miles of your office and every mobile stat you see indicates that the internet will increasingly be accessed primarly by smart phones, surpassing PC based access in 2012/3 at the latest.

3 Kill The Form
A real favourite. 50% of candidates don't complete the forms on the career site. If you were a Sales/marketing person who lost 50% of your leads every month, you would not be in employment very long.

4 Make It Easy
Or, as my Dad always said, follow the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Principle
While technology continues to expand and encourages us to do more, inherently we make things more complicated and difficult. We must simplify. Candidates and Employees live in a 140 character world and their tolerance for complication is decreasing.

5 Collaboration vs Automation
Recruiting is a social encounter. It is not a process to be automated. Move to open collaboration and communication between recruiters and candidates.

6 Dump Your Database (of candidates)
Your CV database is dead and buried, filled with candidates whose data is way out of date. This is not your talent pool. The real talent ocean is the social world - LinkedIn, Facebook and more. Your talent pool is the 10 million you can reach via LinkedIn, for example.

7 Leverage Data
Check out the Big Data conversation going on in the US today. Compare the data in your employee and candidate database with what is going on in the marketplace.

8. Embrace Social
Get over the fear factor. We have anonymised data and information about candidates to avoid discrimination, but this leads to a very disjointed process. The social and conversational element of recruiting is gone - we can’t have the normal conversations that get candidates to come for interview. Candidate data is standardised and moved into a process instead.

Being Social brings Transparency and leads to better behaviours. Recruiting is by definition a social activity so we should ask for social profiles and engage via those routes. Embrace what social brings to both sides, Transparency.

Transparency is the worst enemy of discrimination.

CONCLUSION:

Steve Jobs Quote: "Hiring the best is your most important task."

Last update : 17-11-2011 08:55

Keywords : Hiring Made Easy - Jerome Ternynck

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